NASA launches spacecraft to explore metal-rich asteroid Psyche

The POT launched on Friday a spacecraft from Florida toward Psyche, the largest of several known metal-rich asteroids in our solar system and which scientists believe is the remnant core of an ancient protoplanet, offering clues to the formation of Earth.

The Psyche probe, folded in the cargo compartment of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, lifted off under partly cloudy skies from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, on a planned 3.5 billion kilometer journey through space. The spacecraft, about the size of a small van, will arrive at the asteroid in August 2029.

The launch, broadcast live by NASA, is the latest in a series of NASA missions that seek to understand the origins of our planet some 4.5 billion years ago, sending robotic spacecraft to explore asteroids, primordial relics from the dawn of the Solar system.

The asteroid Psyche measures about 279 km in diameter at its widest point and lies in the outer fringe of the main asteroid belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter.

The cargo panels carrying the spacecraft on the tip of the rocket’s upper stage were ejected about five minutes after launch, and the probe was launched into space an hour later.

According to NASA, it takes about two hours for the spacecraft to autonomously deploy the two solar panels and direct its communications antennas toward Earth.

Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles confirmed the detection of the probe’s first radio signals shortly after it was seen on live video floating free. of the rocket.

The Psyche mission control team plans to spend the next three to four months checking the spacecraft’s systems before sending it into deep space, using solar electric ion thrusters that are being used for the first time on an interplanetary mission.

After reaching the asteroid, the spacecraft will orbit it for 26 months, scanning Psyche with instruments built to measure its gravity, magnetic properties and composition.

According to the main hypothesis, the asteroid is the molten and frozen inner shell of a protoplanet torn apart by collisions with other celestial bodies at the beginning of the solar system. It orbits the Sun at a distance about three times that of the Earth, even when it is closer to our planet.

Psyche, the first asteroid of its kind chosen for close study by spacecraft, is believed to be largely made up of iron, nickel, gold and other metals whose hypothetical collective monetary value has been estimated at $10,000 trillion.

But the Psyche mission has nothing to do with space mining, according to scientists. Its goal is to better understand the formation of Earth and other rocky planets built around molten metal cores. The Earth’s molten core is too deep and hot to be examined directly.

“So we say, ironically, that we go to outer space to explore inner space.”Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator for NASA mission partner Arizona State University, said Tuesday in a briefing for reporters.

Source: Reuters